Noble needs to make his Mark

The sudden disappearance of Mark Noble from the West Ham squad left many fantasy football manager scratching their head, but the midfielder has now returned to the fold.

The 22 year old played 90 minutes against Aston Villa on November 4 before disappearing for the next two games. He was back on the bench however last weekend. Despite his return though I think it’s best to keep Noble benched for this week, if you haven’t already sold him.

The Hammers are home to Manchester United, and without Carlton Cole they lack a lot of firepower. Noble has also been relieved of penalty taking duties which decreases his fantasy value.

His failure to play last week, coupled with injuries, meant Ruining Football could only field ten players in Gameweek 14 and limped to a score of 41 points.

Didier Drogba was the saviour, bagging two goals and three bonus points in Chelsea’s comfortable win over Arsenal at the Emirates Stadium, but captain Cesc Fabregas was a disappointment.

A home game against Stoke this weekend though means that he will be given a chance to redeem himself.

The defence performed reasonably well last week with clean sheets for both Joe Hard and Emiliano Insua, while Gary Cahill chipped in with an assist. Ryan Shawcross would have scored higher had he not limped off after 50 minutes.

Four midfielders combined for a total of six points, and that’s simply not good enough.

Hull’s Jimmy Bullard has been brought in instead of the injured Valon Behrami, meaning there is another set piece taker in the squad.

The Fulham v Sunderland fixture is an interesting matchup and hopefully both Darren Bent and Clint Dempsey can continue their goal scoring form.

Fernando Torres remains sidelined through injury, but has been touted to make a comeback next weekend. With Liverpool out of the Champions League and a busy domestic Christmas period to come, I think it would be stupid to sell the Spaniard, even if it takes a couple of games for him to settle back in.

The team currently sits in 42,626nd place out of a total of 2,173,300 teams.

Author Info

Neil Sherwin

Co-editor of BackPageFootball.com and BackPageRugby.com. Writes mostly on Premier League, A-League and MLS with contributions to other sites including TheFootballSack, InBedWithMaradona and Bloomberg's BSports. Has featured on The Guardian's Football Weekly.